BIO

Click here for Dr. Silver’s retirement story

Christopher Silver is Professor of Urban and Regional Planning who joined the faculty at UF in 2006 as Dean of the College of Design, Construction and Planning (until 2016).  He previously served as Head of the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (1998-2006) and as Professor of Planning and Associate Dean at Virginia Commonwealth University.  Silver has been a four-time Fulbright Senior Scholar at two Indonesian Universities, and in 2018 he was awarded an honorary professorship at the University of Indonesia in their Faculty of Engineering and another in 2019 at the Institute of Technology, Bandung in their School of Architecture, Planning and Policy Development.  He served as a consultant to Indonesia’s National Development Planning Board from 1995-1997 under their Regional Directorate.  

Silver’s teaching and research draws upon his international engagement in planning and urban development since the 1980s, and shaped by his academic preparation in the fields of history and planning.  He received his Master and PhD degrees from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill in History, with a particular focus on urban and planning history.  This was supplemented by courses in urban and regional planning at Chapel Hill that culminated in the Master of Urban and Regional Planning from Virginia Commonwealth University in 1979.  He earned membership in the American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP) and later was elevated to the rank of Fellow in the AICP.  He currently teaches courses in international city development and planning, including Cities of the World, Sustainable Urbanism in Europe, and International Development Planning.  

This combination of planning and history is also reflected in Silver’s research, which includes 8 books (authored, co-authored and edited), 16 book chapters and 18 refereed articles.  His initial publications dealt with race, politics and planning in the United States, including Twentieth Century Richmond:  Planning, Politics and Race (1984) and (with John Moeser) The Separate City: Black Communities in Urban South, 1940-1968 (1995) and (with Mary Corbin Sies) Planning the Twentieth-Century American City (1995).  Teaching, consulting and researching in Indonesia led to Planning the Megacity:  Jakarta in the Twentieth Century (2008), (with Victoria Beard and Faranak Miraftab) Decentralization and Planning:  Contested Spaces for Public Action in the Global South (2008) and (with Andrea Frank) Urban Planning Education:  Beginnings, Global Movement and Future Prospects (2018).  His current publications focus on water management in Jakarta and the problems of flooding and inadequate water services in one of the world’s fastest sinking megacities. Silver is the Guest Editor of a special issue of the Journal of Regional and City Planning on Rapid Urbanization in Asia.  He is a past co-editor of the Journal of the American Planning Association and the founding editor of the Journal of Planning History.  He has served as president of the Society of American City Planning History, vice president and president of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning, president of the Global Planning Education Association Network, and Executive Secretary of the International Planning History Society.